Columns

Should we or should we not intervene? While it looks inevitable that the United States will take some kind of military action against Syria, and may have done so by the time this column is published, the question remains – is military intervention the correct course of action?

Having spent, like many boys and girls in Shelby County’s history, my formative years in keen observation of cows, I am continually amazed by the devotion families have to them, how delicately they treat them and care for them. Sometimes I have to wonder if some among us of have converted to Hindu, so revered are their bovine gods and goddesses. At least cows aren’t allowed to roam the streets anywhere this side of New Delhi.

Anyone that knows me very well knows two things about me: I love to play games, and I love to win. I grew up playing all kinds of sports – baseball, football, tennis – but my favorite was always basketball.

My family also played lots of board games like Monopoly and Life, word games like Scrabble and Boggle and card games like Euchre and Rook. But it didn’t matter what sport or game I was playing, because of my extremely competitive nature, I always did my very best to win.

I have read with interest the competing points of view offered by Chuck Souder, through his column of June 28 titled “The Founders’ Declaration of ‘In-Dependence,’” and the letter of response by Rich Lane (and upon finishing this column found there were a couple of letters in response to Mr. Lane, which I have yet to read).

Now that our students are safely back in their classrooms, parents all over Shelby County can wipe their brows and fall backwards into our recliners in overwhelmed fatigue. That seasonal onslaught is behind us, and we have survived once again the Battle of School Supplies.

Are you one of us, we parents who are assailed annually by requirements that our students must arrive for the first day of school towing a small U-Haul trailer filled with everything from some stratus of computer to a certain color of pencil to be used for a chapter in a one-term geography workbook?

If ever there was a social Rorschach test, it is the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial. What do you see in the verdict? Was it a triumph of our legal system, with justice served, or the result of a system so badly broken that it only perpetuates further injustice?

I heard that several years ago, when President George H.W. Bush was on the campaign trail, he stopped in to visit some residents in a nursing home. Walking up to an elderly woman in a wheelchair, he tried to begin a conversation.

“Hello there, Ma’am, what’s your name?”

“Mary,” she answered.

“Well, Mary, it’s nice to meet you,” the president said. “Do you know who I am?”

The little girl with pigtails and big black eyes rushes onto the stage, smiling and even giggling. She pauses at the right moment, confronts the spotlight and sings in duet a short, sweet song in French, ignoring an audience overflowing assigned seats and every other element of her first stage performance except her role.

She is 6 years old. She is fearless. She is calm. She amazes.

How can one so young respond with such aplomb in such a fearsome situation?